


Open the Gates

by Parhelion



Category: The People - Zenna Henderson
Genre: 1950s, F/M, Families of Choice, Growing Up, Pining, Psychic Abilities
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 19:38:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5468519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Parhelion/pseuds/Parhelion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Twyla was never one to sit with her hands neatly folded in her lap, not even while waiting for magic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Open the Gates

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scribblemyname](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribblemyname/gifts).



  


**I. “She girdeth her loins with strength, and strengtheneth her arms.”**

During the summer when I had grown out of a girl’s troubles but not into a woman’s, we drove all the way from Willow Creek across three counties to the State Fair. As usual, Pa and Ma spent too much of their day worried about my older brother to fuss over me. Bert had this habit of hollering at everyone and running off, so no one noticed whenever I said please and walked away. If you’re a good girl, it seems as if people think you’ll keep on being one as long as no bad boys come along to spoil matters.

The fortune teller I'd given the last of my birthday money to told me I’d soon meet someone tall, dark, and handsome who’d teach me about magic, and the music of the stars, and love me as long as we both lived. Even back then, I knew this was a pipe dream. But her tent was exotic, and she handed me a free copy of “The Gypsy Fortune-teller’s Secrets” while smiling at me hopefully for no reason I could see, so I didn’t mind.

That very next Fall, I met the Francher kid, who’d traveled with some carnival where his Ma had been their fortune teller until she died and they fostered him to our town to be made respectable. This worked about as well as you’d think. He was dark the way we saw it, and kind of tall, and I guessed he might be handsome someday, too. But he was also supposed to be a bad boy and crazy as a bedbug with it. 

Still, I ended up talking to him. I don’t know why, but maybe I was thinking my own fortune teller had seemed nice enough that I could imagine getting sullen from missing someone like her. Or maybe I was already used enough to crazy to know we had plenty of it in Willow Creek and not think I had to shove it all onto some outsider. I guess I wagered it wouldn’t be much trouble to stay polite since he was ignoring me anyhow. If that was what I’d wagered on, I lost.

Turned out, he was magic. And the heart of his magic was making music all by his lonesome, music passed down from his mother’s lineage, music played from the air and learned from the stars. Even better, he saw me. Back then, it felt like no one else did.

He wasn’t bad to me once he’d truly looked. He still wasn’t bad after we had danced together outside the Halloween Party at the Town Hall, him in Levi’s so worn out he wouldn’t go inside. By then I’d seen him, too, angry and afraid even though he could make the skies themselves play what we were feeling while we danced above the treetops.

The Francher kid was lost, twisted up and hurting. And I’d learned from Burt that twisted up and hurting could make you look crazy, and maybe go a little crazy, too, if you couldn’t find some place where you could be at peace. It was a good thing that our substitute teacher, Miss Carolle, and a doctor who’d meant to go hunting out our way, hunted up the Francher kid’s People instead. It was a good thing they came to take him away to where nobody would look at him like he was a carny-trash juvenile delinquent about to pull out a zip gun and take everybody’s spare change.

That’s what I told myself, at least.

Well. That’s what I told myself after four or five months of letting myself waste away like a storybook princess locked up in a tower. Luckily, I was already half-sick of my pining by the evening my Ma looked up from rolling out pie crust on the kitchen counter, frowned, and asked me, “How’s school?”

“Okay, I guess.” It was better than okay. Pining had helped me get a lot of half-hearted studying done, and I wasn’t anything close to behind to begin with.

“It’s only…I keep hearing things.” Ma bit her lower lip and scattered a little flour across the crust.

Hearing things about me, for a change. Usually it was about Bert, or even about my little brother Larry, who was supposed to be the best of us, and who used that supposed to be whenever he was set on making mischief. But I had found some enemies by defending the Francher kid and, even worse, attracted the attention of the Sew-Sew Club. Willow Creek was a small town far out into nowhere, and the ladies who sewed never forget one word of what they’d said over their needles. It’s wasn’t as if there was much else around they wanted to do.

I had to twitch my hand away from one of my braids; to my Ma, the gesture would be a dead giveaway. Instead I told her, “I’m good at typing. Miss Semper said I might consider trying some business correspondence courses. Shorthand, and maybe bookkeeping.” Or consider going on to State Normal, but I didn’t bother mentioning that possibility since my name was Twyla, not Tyler or Thomas.

It was a surprise when Ma turned all the way around to look at me, brows knit as if I was one of my brothers. Then, after a bit of me staring at her and her studying me, she turned back to tell the pie crust, “Maybe you should, at that. Your Uncle Vernon, up in Bear Valley, knows a lot of businessmen who need office staff, what with those ski clubs and all.”

I opened my mouth. I closed it again. This time, I didn’t resist the inclination to chew on the end of my braid. It was a lot better than wailing, “But then he wouldn’t be able to find me!”

Much more of this, and I wouldn’t be able to find myself, not even with a miner’s headlamp and a marching band. And if the Sew-Sew Club caught tell of my confusion, they would be happy to help me find my way right into a princess tower, with walled-up gates and thorny hedges planted outside, where I could sit by a window and pine all I wanted while they watched and wielded their needles.

So, “Bear Valley is a very pretty town,” I told her, and Ma nodded before she reached for her trimming knife, and that was that.

I did a lot of extra studying my Senior year and didn’t spend much time alone with Joe Leland or Frank Groman or any of the rest of the handful of could-be boys my age. And no prince on a winged white horse came flying over the horizon to take me away. Instead, Bert found more trouble, and Larry won the County Essay Contest by letting everyone know what he wanted to be when he grew up. As for me, I got a certificate from my correspondence school, and the School Board had Frank Groman give the speech at our graduation instead of me since he would run the general store one day.

But before I left for Bear Valley, my Ma tore herself away from trying to make Bert get married for long enough to drive me down to the county seat. And my Pa had set aside money for me to get office clothes and a styling session. I wasn’t ready to burn down Willow Creek, or launch one ship, let alone a thousand, but when I looked into the wardrobe mirror, I thought the young lady there might know what she was doing.

It gave me the courage to write Miss Carolle, the substitute teacher who had told me I could have three-syllable thoughts in the time before the Francher kid departed and she went away, too. I gave her my uncle’s address.

I guess a girl can have more than one dream. I was starting to think maybe she should. They seemed to grow better that way, with some company.

  


**II. “She openeth her mouth with wisdom; and in her tongue is the law of kindness.”**

Mr. Hansen, also known as my boss the lawyer, thought he was pretty smart. He was, but not in an eye to the distant future kind of way. He was good at anything short-term if you made sure to double-check what else he was up to. Somehow I had known to watch him since about a minute after we met.

Taking me on after he lost a secretary who had had enough of him was an example of his kind of cleverness. He earned a favor from my Uncle Vernon by hiring me. And he didn’t have to pay me very much since I was willing to lodge year around in one of the rickety boarding houses for the ski instructors, which freed up money for a wardrobe good enough to work at a lawyer’s. That so-called chalet wasn’t any worse than some places back home, and my rent there was cheap since I was a twelve-month tenant.

After three seasons and lots of rich skiers running into each other on the slopes, leading to ever more document boxes, spring came and Mr. Hansen tried telling me how nice I looked and all about the sunshine I brought with me into his office. But I knew from Willow Creek there was a Look for this, and I used it. Since summer soon arrived along with its female dudes and lady hikers, he eventually stopped telling me anything other than how he wanted his coffee prepared. By the time he started up again, after the leaves were off but before the snow was flying, I knew his filing system and when to Look, and didn’t need a princess tower or a local man to hold him off. He was predictably seasonal.

Some time passed. I took more courses through the mail. I learned to ski. The ski instructors, who came from everywhere, were interesting and friendly, if migratory. I learned more about life and about “life”, even if I chose to skip a lot of the latter. I went to all the summer ranch concerts and winter carol festivals, and let the music remind me of whatever it could before it told me what it had to say for itself. Every now and then, I wrote to Miss Carolle, more for our three-syllable conversations than to fish for information, which had never been forthcoming in any case. I refused to pine, for all the good that did me. Even the nicest men who shared my tastes in movies were also a little too taken up with ski ropes and summer grazing leases for my tastes. And something inside me knew they weren't right, weren't mine. I still didn’t quite fit in. I knew I was ready to move on.

By that following March, I had already sent out a few applications to offices in bigger places than Bear Mountain. Mr. Hansen hadn’t kicked. Instead, he had written me a glowing reference, and I kept the carbon copies to prove it. I think he was tired of giving me raises and still seeing The Look. I didn’t know why, but it always worked, and I could tell this was annoying him.

One day, just before the spring melt, my boss was out loitering over his lunch at the best of the local Lodges, so I was dining at my desk and wrinkling my nose over _Peyton Place_. My housemate Tessa had loaned it to me, knowing I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. I still couldn’t see since no one in the book was acting in any way I didn’t recognize from Willow Creek and Bear Mountain.

Miss Jane Marple managed to point out how often everybody across the world acted the same as they did back in St. Mary Mead without making this much of a fuss about it. I was considering going back to _What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw!_ when the front door to the offices opened, and Mr. Hansen came through it. He had a lady skier with him and wore what I knew was a smirk on his face, but at least he was smart enough not to put his hand on her back as he steered her through into the reception room.

She was brisk even in how she tugged off her gloves. “Thank you again for breaking off your lunch to see me without an appointment.”

He shrugged, and smiled some more. “We’re an informal lot here in Bear Creek. Here’s hoping we can keep that trait, given how fast this town is growing.”

“Which would be why I’m here.” She glanced over at me and away, but it wasn’t dismissive, more to let me know I was seen. It was the sort of fine point of behavior I’ve always been able to spot.

“If you’ll come into my office, Mrs. Andersen, we can discuss that in more detail.” He led her across his personal threshold and closed his thick oak door behind them.

I packed away my book and my lunch, and checked for stray crumbs on my lips in my compact mirror, before fixing my lipstick. As I had expected, it took about a minute for the intercom on my desk to buzz and for him to say, “Twyla. Bring in the Mingus Mountain quadrangle from the county deed maps, please.”

The interval to neaten up had been useful. I had wanted to wrestle with a hunch. Even at first glance, Mr. Hansen’s new client was something above the usual run of rich ladies in from the coasts to ski and admire ski instructors. She was rich, all right, with those clothes and that grooming, but there was also something aside from her ax-carving-of-Grace-Kelly looks and right-there attitude that made me both interested and wary. I was paying attention when I brought in the quadrangle maps.

“…good opportunities.” Mr. Hansen was saying. “But you’re right in thinking you’ll need someone to deal with local politics.”

“Let’s be clear. I’m interested in investing, not in subsidizing some cabal.”

“I understand. However, this new resort would be a tide that lifts all boats. I’m looking forward to seeing a little more business myself once it’s open; maybe then I could afford to follow in your footsteps. But, at the moment, I’m still free to represent your interests.” He took the maps from me and glanced over at her. “Something to drink?”

“Coffee, if it’s not too much of an imposition?” Mrs. Andersen asked this of me, rather than him. I found I was smiling a little as I gave her the expected nod of assent. “One cube and just a splash of something white, please.”

I was about ready to pour fresh brew from the percolator gurgling on the tiny counter in our filing room when Mr. Hansen came out of his office to use my telephone. I popped my head through the open doorway to raise my eyebrows at him in inquiry. He shook his head as he said to whoever was on the other side of the line, “No, plenty of money. She’ll require a little sweetening but not much. Don’t try too hard. Just start by asking for…” 

I had never been able to keep my mouth shut in the face of pure dishonesty. And it would be easier getting temporary work helping close the books for the season at one of the ski camps than not being able to face myself in a mirror.

Picking up her cup of coffee, going back into the office, I asked, “Anything else, ma’am?”

“No, thank you.” Instead of making me move around or reach across her, she put down the map she had been examining and stretched out one long arm to take the cup from me.

I said, quietly, “I just thought you should know Mr. Hansen is a charter member of the Mingus Mountain Development Consortium.”

Her glance at me was swift and keen, but I had borne up under much heavier weights than her gaze. Without another word, I went out to my desk, where my boss was wrapping up his telephone call and looking very pleased with himself. He waved me away with the hand holding his cigarette rather than his hand holding my receiver, so I returned to the file room to clean out the percolator. When I got back to my desk, he was gone. I stubbed out the cigarette butt left smoldering in the ashtray I kept on my desk just in case of him, and resumend my typing.

Mrs. Andersen didn’t look over at me when she went out the front door an hour later. But the way Mr. Hansen gradually got both pettish and a little puzzled over the next few days told me he didn’t know what had gone amiss with his maneuvering. So, I started asking about work around town as carefully as I could. If my boss ever thought to inquire, I’d have to tell him what had happened, and if he didn’t ask, it still wouldn’t be fair to stay. I come from where we know what happens next once a dam starts leaking.

Full of my own plans, I think it would be fair to say I was truly surprised when Mrs. Andersen sat down next to me at the town diner the next Saturday afternoon. “The blue plate special,” she told Maude, as I glanced at her sideways.

But I am not a sideways-glancing person, or at least not for long. When I had finished dealing with the third quarter of my turkey club, I turned to her and said, “Hello, Mrs. Andersen. I didn’t expect to see you here.”

“I don’t believe you did, which is one of the reasons I am here.

I considered this, rubbing the tip of my thumb across the shell pink polish on my little fingernail, which is how I coped now that I no longer had the braids to help along my thinking. “So, I guess you’re not interested in looking at any more Mingus Mountain property.”

“Oh, I am, but I do like knowing precisely where I’m standing while I look.” She waved a languid and dismissing hand, and the Zuni silver bracelets she wore glinted a little beneath the diner’s fluorescents. “But never mind all that. I’m much more interested in discussing you. I’ve been asking around, and you’re interesting.”

“I’d like to think so, but I’d mostly be fooling myself.”

“Hmm. No.” She examined her wrist, those bracelets jingling sweetly. “I am an inveterate collector of interesting and undervalued items. In fact, I have a true knack for it.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

For some reason, I thought she was going to say something else before she told me, “I understand you’ve been seeking a new position that offers greater opportunities.”

I let her notice me glancing around at the Saturday lunch crowd packed elbow to elbow in the diner. “If I wasn’t before, I am now.”

She smiled, pleased. “You truly see people, and you keep thinking even when surprised. I also understand you are fascinated by music. Now, I happen to have a job opening for an honest, perceptive, and capable young secretary with an interest in music.”

After considering her, with her sleek, blonde hair, and her Indian jewelry, and her ice-blue, cashmere turtleneck worth more money than I cared to think on, I decided I didn’t really know her yet. Something about her kept slipping through my fingertips. So, when I gave her The Look, I watered it down with some genuine interest, just in case.

Her smile widened and brightened, which was like watching a cougar start to purr. “Perhaps I should explain in greater detail. After lunch.” She dimpled: on that face, it was somewhere between frightening and funny.

Once we had taken our walk together and she had said her piece, I let her watch me make my way up the icy steps to Bear Mountain’s Carnegie Library. I always kept my notebook with me, and, one way or another, she should know I would be doing my research about what she had said. My telephone bill next month would be a nightmare.

Life being what it is, I was home and writing out a checklist before I paused to sort through the accumulated mail from my post office box, looking for the latest mimeographed newsletter from the Campfire Choral in order to search the membership list for someone I could stomach taking over as Treasurer. And that was when I first noticed the well-worn envelope with all its rural-route dustiness.

I wasn’t surprised that the handwriting was half sharp points and half bold curves, or that there was nothing sheepish or swoony about the tone of the words. Such expectations wouldn’t have fit the Francher kid, although I supposed I should think of him as just Francher now. I double-checked the signature – yes, just Francher – before I re-read all the pages he had written. It is hard to focus on the reality of something when you’ve already told yourself a hundred stories about it.

Well, now I knew how he felt having kin to care about, and about learning to fix wiring in a small mine. And about the insides of radios. And his general annoyance at the stretch and march of piano keyboards, especially when they were out of tune anyways. And about his mostly good opinion of West Side Story even in its scratchy, wrapped-up state on vinyl. And that he was composing. And about how he wrote when he was happy. But, I’ll freely admit, just as important to me was the way in which he started off his letter.

_I wanted to forget everything about that town, but you weren’t everything. Then I thought I should write I was sorry, but I figured out my asking for pardon would be because of my own feelings. Now I’m left with nothing but hoping to hear from you and find out about how you’ve been doing. I suppose it’s still asking for something for me, but maybe my hopes will be easier to read about than my forgetting or my expecting._

When he requested my address at the end, I could tell this was also meant to be an asking and not an assuming. He came close to succeeding, too. Being with his People had been good for him.

Even so, I sat tapping my pen on the blotter for a good minute or so before I opened up my notebook and checked the business address Mrs. Andersen had given me, in order to include it in my reply. I’m ashamed it took me that long to choose this Francher who was now over the lost and hurting Francher kid in my head. But I did choose.

The winter breeze was swirling cold and clean around me as I came away from mailing my letter at the town post office, and I had to blink against the brilliant light reflected by the great, open streaks of snow on the dun mountains looming above town. The sky above me was huge and deep with blue. Winter was almost done.

As I descended to the street, Franz, from the Lone Pine camp, went up the stairs past me into the post office, probably to post a letter letting someone know he was leaving Bear Mountain.

“Miss Twyla,” he said as he passed, with a nod to me and an appreciative look.

Only then did it occur to me to turn around what I had done and look at its other side. The Francher in my letter had reached out blindly to choose this Twyla in Bear Mountain.

Maybe it was just as well I was now on my way to see the great Pacific Ocean. Such lessons could stand some extra studying.

  


**III. “She considereth a field, and buyeth it: with the fruit of her hands she planteth a vineyard.”**

All-American Wireless had been started by Mrs. Andersen’s uncle all the way back in the twenties, when hardly anyone thought wireless sets would amount to much, and certainly nobody cared about whatever might happen in some small city by the sea known mainly for nice scenery, Spanish-style buildings, and rich summer visitors from down south.

Now KAAW was also KAME, and KGEX-FM, and KUOL-FM, and a television station or two, and three or four theaters, and a few extra clubs, and even a rinky-dink recording studio, and Mrs. Andersen’s uncle was a very old man who still loved to fuss around with entertainment. Right now, he was running KUOL-FM and indulging in everything up to and including Rock and Roll.

“Why rock and roll?” I asked him, since he preferred blunt.

“Because I can still hear it, girl,” Mr. Howards said, and cackled meanly. He often looked mean when he was about to be sweet, which I was learning came in handy for working in show business.

Sure enough, he offered me the last jelly doughnut and then sent me on an extra-long lunch so he could totter off and persecute everyone about Johnny Cash and The Kingston Trio at that terrifying old folks' chess club to which he belonged. 

As for me, I stopped by the drugstore lunch counter on Federal Street to have my turkey club and read the latest letter from Francher.

Afterwards, I knew exactly what he thought about Federal Dam projects, and helping relocate about two hundred People who couldn’t act like everybody else even for the five minutes when it might make more sense, and maddening jobs replacing vacuum tubes broken by construction workers who believed you could throw darts in a barroom right next to a television set, and Theremins. He also admitted I might be right about learning advanced musical notation, as he very well should. Also, he thought I’d look good in green. His mother had liked it, too. And he agreed there wasn’t really any justification for mosquitoes that didn’t fall back on Mystery, but zucchini was finally coming clear to him, especially in bread baked by someone else.

Okay, his letter might have been a lot more like seeing Robin Hood fletch arrows than watching him racing through Sherwood Forrest after the Sherriff of Nottingham’s tax collectors, inspiring ballads left and right, but that somehow made me like it all the more. But I still forced myself to put it away after the third read-through and take out my letter from Ma.

When he came back to the station, Mr. Howards was extra cheerful, with all of his wrinkles colliding with each other. I was sure he had found something horrible to say to all those other terrifying old folks. And he had.

He said it to me, too. “This city is going to be the first and last stop on a rock and roll tour using all of my local boys and girls. A dance party tour that can headline my clubs!”

“That’s bad luck,” I told him. “Nobody wants to join a dance party tour these days.”

Mr. Howards still read his _Variety_ and his _Billboard_. He knew what had happened to Buddy Holly and those other artists during the Winter Dance Party Tour. I think he had just forgotten for a minute.

He scowled, looking like he was about to shoot a puppy. “No, you’re right.” He brightened. “A record! We can schedule some club dates for 'rehearsals'—“ He used his gnarled-up fingers to draw little quotation marks in the air around the word. “--and then make a record. Maybe two or three! I knew there was some reason I kept that studio.”

“Besides the fact it makes good money.” And it did. As a city, we were somewhat big but still isolated enough that it was more economical for local musicians to record in Mr. Howard’s studio than haul their instruments all the way south. The inside of his recording studio saw every musician in the three counties from the mariachi band that played by the northern Mission to the faculty string quartet from the music academy in the hills.

“We can make more money!”

I would have gone “mmm-hmm” but even I knew better than to bet against Mr. Howards when it came to the entertainment business. Instead I pulled out my notebook, uncapped the silver-plated fountain pen I had received as a performance bonus, flipped to a clean page, and then asked him, “Who will you want to run this project?” with the nib of my pen poised over the paper.

“You,” he said, with a look on his face fit for Boris Karloff.

I sighed. He cackled gleefully.

Mrs. Andersen had hired me to be Mr. Hansen’s executive secretary while he ran KUOL-FM and occasionally meddled with his other properties and possessions. Before I arrived, I believed I was really being hired to be his secretary and sitter, which I thought could be no worse than babysitting Larry. But since I had arrived, I had slowly come to realize I had truly been hired to be his executive secretary while being trained up as his assistant manager. He trusted those people his niece had sent him to take care of his business – having met her, I thought I understood – but he could be kind of twitchy about other business types who weren't from her or related to the terrifying old folks.

Most times, this extra work wasn’t too much trouble. Radio engineers were almost normal, just matching the definition of monomaniacal from my advanced composition correspondence course. Disc jockeys weren’t that much worse than miners and cowboys, only prone to using more words. Musicians didn’t tend toward anything that wouldn’t happen in most towns from time to time on the nights after paydays. And I’d found I had a sense for this, taking the measure of someone and wielding The Look when I needed to and using plain talk, smiles, or donuts to get my results the rest of the time.

But right now I felt much the same way I had when I was on the Halloween Dance committee back in Willow Creek, and we had looked up twenty feet inside the Town Hall to see the entire county’s supply of green crepe paper nailed to the beams, and ceilings, and half the walls as well, covered in cobwebs and all of it having to come down.

I had learned a lot since then. “Well,” I said, and started writing. “I’ll need you to sign some authorizations for me.”

The mangers were no problem at all. The bands weren’t much of a problem either. I came back to the office at KUOL-FM with a pile of agreements and nothing else worse than three promo discs and a plateful of doubtful brownies. That should have warned me leaving the recording studio until last had been a bad idea.

I finally visited them on a Saturday because it was a day when they were less likely to be booked and more likely to pay attention. The Western Islands’ Recording Studio was over on Dos Piedras, and behind its sturdy adobe façade it sheltered three entire live studios, although everyone told me the smallest one used to be a broom closet. Even after more than thirty years of operation, it was a wildly make-do outfit.

Once I had let Mr. Brackman, the manager, know what I was there for, he settled on a pained stare. Then he told me, “You’d better talk to Max.”

I went to talk to Max. Max, who was another one of Mrs. Andersen’s hires, doubled as Western Islands’ producer-for-hire and chief recording engineer. Of course he was in the smallest studio. For some reason, he was holding up an egg carton, the cardboard kind you use in the cities for two dozen eggs. While I watched, he frowned at it and then pressed it against the wall.

“Hello,” I said.

“Nope,” he replied.

“Yep. It’s me or Mr. Howards.”

“Within these studio walls, it’ll soon be no one but me. Salvatore is cutting out to stay at a monastery in Kyoto as soon as he’s done cleansing his karma. And, wow, can that cat cleanse. Four months before he musters out, tops.” He rotated the egg carton around its axis of symmetry by forty-five degrees. I'd finished up thinking it was nice my other advanced correspondence courses weren’t going to waste right before he told me, “Mrs. Andersen hasn’t found me a replacement and we’re booked for two engineers out through the end of the calendar year. That’s why all I have for you is nope.”

Taking a breath first so I wouldn’t sound shrill, I suggested, “You could hire your own replacement for Salvatore.”

“I could.” He nodded. “But I won’t” He shook his head. “My hires look good. Mrs. Andersen’s hires are good. _Good_ good.” He raised his eyebrows as if all the repeating wasn’t emphasis enough.

“And she’s in Europe.”

“Yeah. Bad timing. And Brachman-san won’t touch this gig, not that he should. Which is why— “

“You need someone else to do this.”

“Say, you’re good, too.” He wasn’t being a smart-aleck by saying this. Instead he stood, the egg carton now clasped to his middle like a cardboard hymnal, at ease with his pause while he waited for me to get whatever else he was saying. By using magic, I guess. Well, he could keep waiting.

I narrowed my eyes at him, and slowly he smiled. Given that Willow Creek was a thousand miles away, this was an awful lot like dealing with my kin. “I barely know a thing about sound engineering.”

As if we had somehow jumped forward in our talking, he told me, “Don’t worry. I may not hire, but I am a good trainer. _Good_ good.”

Maybe it was my posture giving me away. I’ve been told I can have an air about me if I feel I’m being slid around like one of Mr. Howard’s chess pieces. But that still didn’t make my fix a bad one. I was just going to try applying it on my terms.

I examined the polish on my little fingernail for a bit, considering my response, before I said, “There is a possibility. But you _would_ have to do a lot of training.”

He shrugged.

“And there would likely be opinions. Lots of them, some sounding half-crazy. At a minimum, three months of them since we believe in fair play for KAAW Entertainment employees.”

This time, he had to think. But he shrugged again.

“Very well. I warned you. If, after that, you still want me to do your asking for you, and the answer is yes, on your head be it.” It may have been the first time in my adult life that I was pleased to hear my words come out sounding just like something Ma would say.

At least Max did me the courtesy of blinking two or three times before he bobbed his head in agreement and told me, “Solid. And sold.”

All this made for a long day, the sort of day that made for an even longer night. Not every evening is a gentle trudge through small tasks leading toward slumber. This one wasn’t. I sat at the writing desk in my small apartment by the sea cliffs, listening to the sounds of the waves slowly rolling about their business, for a long time before I got out my stationary. Even then, I had to take a deep breath before I started to write.

_Dear Francher:_

I paused, looking out at the grayness billowing beyond my window. All the fog made the ocean waves seem closer, louder. Putting down my fountain pen, I rubbed the polish on my other fingernails with my thumb for a minute or so, waiting for my own fog to clear. Finally, I managed to say it out loud. “I’m not supposed to be the one who asks.”

Then I closed my eyes before I manage to say the rest of it in the night-time quiet broken only by a foghorn, and the channel bells, and the waves. “This time, I wanted to be the one who got rescued.”

Opening my eyes, I picked up my pen. Then I looked down at the shine of it in the lamplight, and realized where I was sitting, and what I was holding, and how it all happened. After that it only took a few more seconds. Even so, I sighed before, at last, I wrote.

_I got your last letter, and was sorry to read you are being driven half-crazy by your new job. There’s something here in San Juan P. that might be more interesting or might be even more crazy. In either case, I don’t know if it’s a chance you have ever seriously pondered. Still, it_ is _a chance, and I don't want to make your choices for you. So, I’ll just tell you about what’s been going on in Mr. Hansen’s radio empire this week and let you form your own opinions._

When I had finished the letter, and addressed it, and stamped it, I held it in both hands for a few seconds, considering. It was strange. Right then, paper between my fingertips, I could just about hear him saying, “I hate that scratchy, wrapped-up music” even though I knew the words were only in my head. But they were still so clear to me that I found myself pressing my letter in its envelope between both my palms while I murmured to it, and to him, “Then make it wrap up better. I know you can.”

  


**IV. “Give her of the fruit of her hands; and let her own works praise her in the gates.”**

If you had asked me five years back, I might have said there would be a flourish of trumpets. Instead, I saw a tall figure with an army surplus duffle bag waiting at the reception desk of KUOL-FM. Francher's chin was tilted up as he studied the speaker that played whatever our radio audience was hearing. Right now, it was a song from soul hour called "Today I Sing the Blues," courtesy of Big Barry James' "New Spins" show. I was surprised to see Francher's raised eyebrows weren’t signaling bitter resistance against the song but startled interest.

Still, he turned from the music to look at me. Then he smiled.

I’d bet my eyes widened. “Wow.”

“Wow right back.” The smile widened into a grin. “On my side, is it the tie? I can buy more.”

I wanted to take the steps forward to reach out and touch his lips, but instead I shook my head as I traced an upward-turned curve in the air above my own.

Sounding something between wry and sardonic, he confided, “Last week? I laughed.”

“I’ll never tell.” I flicked fingers at his duffle. “If you want to bring that along, we’ll drive by Western Islands. They have your paperwork, and you need to pick up some keys. Right now you can have Salvatore's room - he's the engineer who'll be leaving - for free until you know the city better and decide what you want to do about your housing. He’s already staying with some Japanese monks up in the canyons.”

Francher looked a little surprised, and I told him, “This city is a little off-center. I've been told it started out that way, and it just keeps getting more so.”

His nod was thoughtful. "Thanks for the ride."

"I'll even throw in a ten-cent tour along the way.

Remembering his habits from Willow Creek, I made sure my one-person tour as we drove included the quieter beaches, the city ends of the roads that wandered up into the canyons, and the Mission with its shaded silences and tall candles. He somehow managed to sprawl out in the passenger seat of my little Metropolitan, looking lanky and comfortable while he examined the landscape except for the moments when I would catch him studying me while I talked. Then he would blink, not quite frown and not quite smile, and turn his attention back to the scenery. I felt he was somehow taken aback I caught his gaze each time although I didn’t know why he was startled. I had always felt his attention like the pull of a longshore current, running strong and surprising beneath the surface's calm or chop.

The third time I caught him looking, I took it as permission to pry. “When I had a chance to consider, I was surprised you chose to come.”

“You shouldn’t have been,” he told some palm trees.

“I thought your Elders might not approve.”

“I'm old enough to make my own choices. When to go, when to stay.” Those words had held a bit of flatness better suited to the Francher kid, but then one corner of his mouth quirked up. “I did think, at first, they would argue more. But Jemmy and I looked – looked in a way that searches and sees - at a map together, and here I am. Right where I meant to be anyhow.”

This was half a story, but I didn’t need it all today, not even the part of it meant for me. I had learned to wait.

“That being the case, I hope you enjoy your stay.” I made the turn into the Western Islands’ parking lot, had to veer quickly, and said “Except for the part where I almost ran over a cellist.”

He lowered his hands – which he had raised to do something – and said, “You should be fair. That's the part where a cellist almost gets you to run over him.”

I smiled, but I kept my eyes on my parking.

The Music Academy Chamber Orchestra had booked Studio A for a session, so the reception area was chaotic. We stood against a wall, back out of the way, as Mr. Brackman and the administrative staff went through the expected cat-herding phase of moving any group of musicians who are not that used to recording into the live studio. Through all the chaos, Francher lounged against the paneling, his expression placid but his eyes alight in a way I wish I had seen more of, back in Willow Creek. And I was pleased to see that the occasional twitches of his lips were amused, not sullen or bitterly annoyed.

I won a bet with myself when Salvatore, our future monk, found five minutes to come out in order to hand over his keys. He looked over Francher, Francher looked him over, a wandering flautist veered away from their encounter into a studio secretary carrying two microphone stands, and that was that. After helping straighten out the resulting fuss, Francher disappeared back into the innards of the studio building, drafted to take part in his first recording session.

Experience told me he would be back in the booth for hours, somehow finding himself shifting tape reels, taking notes, and fetching coffee until long after the last note had died away on the other side of the glass in the live studio. I made sure his duffle was safe behind the receptionist’s desk before I left, just in case of rogue trombonists.

Maybe, when I was younger, I might have felt abandoned. But I’d like to think that even back then I would have ended up, as I did that day, humming happily as I departed to go about my own business.

Of course, when I did get back to my business, Mr. Howards wanted to pause in moving file cards with the names of bands on them back and forth across the top of his big oak desk to ask about what was really none of his business. “And how is your young man?”

“Learning all about microphone placement and Verdi.” I looked at him and let him see me sigh. “I guess it’ll do no good to say you shouldn’t ask me about my personal life? Or to point out that he’s not my young man?”

“I have decades of being an interfering busybody behind me,” he said happily, which at least was more than anyone in the Sew-Sew club had ever admitted. “Have to keep up with my Club, after all.” Then he got a cunning look about him. “About your Francher. Mr. Francher?”

“Just Francher. And not mine.”

“Francher, then,” he said, getting the first bit right and taking it as an excuse to ignore the second. “I don’t suppose you’d care to make a small wager?”

I wouldn’t. And I wasn’t surprised to find Francher waiting outside the twin glass doors to the lobby when I finally got free later that evening. Without a word between us, we veered off from the parking lot and instead walked south, towards the beach.

He tucked his hands into his trouser pockets. I nodded hello to the clerk I knew from my druggist, out walking her dog. Neither of us said much until we were out of downtown and across the coast highway, strolling along the sidewalk that runs above the sand.

He was relaxed when he spoke, and his voice filled with something it took me a few seconds to recognize as contentment. “I didn’t know much back then, but I did know I wasn’t ready.”

“I knew you needed to get away. You were angry.” I turned to smile at him, so I could turn away and say without suggestions, “It didn’t take me long to figure what happened to all that ripped-down crepe paper in the town hall. And the old bridge, and the hanging bolder, and that fence, and those pigs.” He winced a little when I mentioned the pigs, so I added, “I could tell they were a mistake. You replaced them, after all.”

“Couldn’t eat bacon for months. It’s just as well I never saw much on my plate.”

“You were yelling and hollering without saying a word. I had too much hollering in my life around then, but I still might have let you use your words and holler at me.”

“Glad you didn’t. It would only have hurt worse, your pouring yourself out like water on dry sand.”

The onshore breeze was doing what I wanted to do, ruffling through his hair and toying with it. He said, “I told myself I shouldn’t come back.” It was his turn to give me a smile. 

“It’s not that I worried you’d say anything about what you learned about my…gifts and persuasions. Miss Carolle was surprised you’d figured out so much of it. She thought you might not have noticed the flying.”

I rolled my eyes, and he tugged up one corner of his mouth, sardonic as he had ever been. For a moment, we were younger and back in Willow Creek, united against the stubborn naiveté of adults.

But then he squared his shoulders and continued. “It would be asking so much. I’m one who knows how hard it is to live your life with your face pressed against a window, seeing and yearning for what’s on the other side. Although, if anyone could live like that with honesty and grace, you could.” He shrugged, as if his last sentence had handed me dead seaweed, and not the rarest of intact sea glass, in the way of a compliment.

“Then why did you come?”

This smile was crooked, almost glum, and entirely devastating. “If you weren’t going to make my decisions for me, I couldn’t do that for you, either.”

“Francher,” I began, and he stopped, shifted around to see what I would say. So it was his own fault when, after I’d stopped, too, I put a hand on his arm. “It was always you. Always, even when we were both too young.”

His eyes widened slightly in the dimming twilight, and I could see his breath catch, the pulse in his throat speed up a little. I knew, somehow, that he wanted to pull me in close. Instead he took the hand I’d put on his arm into his own hand. After a long, dark moment of consideration, he raised it to his lips and kissed my palm before he caressed it with his thumb, laced my arm through his, and started walking me back toward the highway.

His touch really did seem to burn like heat from a fire in the way the books had claimed it might. I had to walk with him a good half-minute before I could even clear my throat to say, “That was romantic.”

“Oh, I don’t mind learning something good from _movies_ ,” he said.

“You and your old phonograph records,” I told him. “Honestly, stop complaining and do better.”

“I know. You told me. And I will.”

“Well, good.” Yes, I missed what he was acknowledging had happened.

“Yes, good. I was talking to Max, and it seems as if— “ And, with that, he was off.

I’m glad that I was in the business myself. Hearing a speech about his brand new notions in regards to record producing for twenty minutes may have been a sensible way to bank the fires, but in every other way it would have been a bit thick for anything resembling a first date. I’d say this was the case even after taking into account all the snatches of music from nowhere that illustrated some of his points.

As it was, I was interested enough, and could add enough needed comments, to keep our conversation going until we were back across the coastal highway. Then I let myself tug firmly on his arm after he had stopped dead for a moment to smolder about multi-tracking, to tell him, “Come on. It’s late. The buses aren’t running. I’ll give you a ride to your new place.”

And wasn’t it nice to already know I’d neither have to wrestle for the keys, and the right to drive my own car with them, nor explain an automobile ride was all I’d meant to offer.

However, what did then happen goes to show why I should not gloat. It’s distracting. We were all the way into the KAAW Building parking lot before I suddenly registered the ten or so cars scattered around it at this late hour. 

“Uh. Oh.”

Francher looked at me with interest damped down by about four drops of alarm. “Something I should know about?”

“Too late. I’m penned in.” Well, my car was penned in. I let loose of his arm, turned, took both of his hands between mine, and told him earnestly, “You’ll have to be very brave.” I was only half fooling.

“I am very brave,” he said, also both serious and fooling. “What am I being very brave about?”

“The Del Oeste Chess and Festival Marching Society. Sometimes their board meets here because Mr. Howards has the nicest chairs. It’s not that they bite, unlike some club members we both knew. But they’re just as fond of trading news as ever was. You may be glad you wore a tie today.”

Right as I was finishing, we both heard the sound of several voices coming from the direction of the lobby.

Professor Montoya from the conservatory was the first to break away from the pack. As usual, she wore a hat, and a great many scarves, and swooped her hands while she spoke as if she was conducting her conversations. “No. Don’t tell me; let me guess. You, young man, you must be Francher.”

“I guess I must be,” he said mildly. Polite, but still Francher.

“That’s him, all right,” said Mr. Howards. He sounded as proud as if he had found Francher cast up on the beach after high tide and brought him back for show and tell.

This was all the permission the professor needed. “I understand from Hillary Mueller, who heard from David Horwitz at the studio, that you compose. Now, what do you think about John Cage?”

Somehow her question broke the dam. Without quite interrupting each other, everyone talked at once. I could see big Mr. Wallace, way at the back of the pack, pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger even while I sensed the club’s attention settling around us like the world’s friendliest but most insistent Afghan blanket. As always, this was somehow as terrifying as it was comforting, and I was glad to see any sign that somebody else beside me understood that. I found I was standing up straighter and trying to seem attentive.

Francher, for his part, was bearing up but looked distracted. I don’t know what anyone expected, pulling his concentration back and forth like they were. Finally, he found the tiniest of pauses, threw up both hands, and said, “Stop! I’m not caught up enough to talk above and below and above all at once.”

Amazingly, something like silence fell. He was the center of all eyes, but he did better with it than I would have. “Thank you. Can I use words, please?”

“Actually, most of us can’t hear you the other way,” Mr. Howards said.

“Or hear you much, in some cases,” Miss Hillary said, and Mr. Song in somehow shushed her using nothing but his posture.

“First, one question. Where have you all been?” Francher asked, addressing the back of the crowd.

It was Mr. Wallace who answered, mild as milk. “Right here. Living in plain sight, the way ‘Outsiders’ should.” Derned if he didn’t make big finger-quotes around Outsiders, the exact same way Mr. Howards liked to do.

“Now, Bud,” little Mr. Woolman said, as mild as milk, “show grace.” He was the one who turned to Francher and continued, in formal and courteous tones, “Adjacent company excepted, we’re merely the offspring of this world. Almost entirely promises for the future, or tiny hints, or mere knacks, not powers and persuasions. Flotsam and jetsam, perhaps, or even stunted seedlings huddled together for the shelter.”

“Not to forget, for protection. Have you ever read ‘The Gold Bug’?” Professor Montoya asked, in full-out teacher style. “There are other ways to hide treasure which work as well as burying it in a hole in the ground.”

“'The Purloined Letter',” I said without thinking, and she nodded once, satisfied.

Mr. Woolman slid in neatly with, “We’re not all different in your sense, Francher. We’re only a group that tries to assist a few younger people who might benefit from the resources of their elders.”

“Resources of their Elders,” Francher repeated. I think both the correction and his resignation were only obvious to me.

“But, it’s awfully nice of your People to send you here to say hello,” Miss Hillary piped at him, and this time nobody stopped her. Instead they all made happy, agreeing noises, and then joined her in pitching into Francher as if he was someone’s grand-nephew making telephone calls to ask about a fiftieth high school reunion.

“Didn’t Melinda discuss this with you?” Mr. Howards asked me, not even trying to be discrete, not that it would have worked. “She usually tells people about her Knack for collecting.”

“We talked in a town diner, on Saturday, around noon, during ski season,” I told him. “Are you truly surprised some wires got crossed?”

“Oh my dear, wouldn't you know it,” he said, sounding like an ancient Noel Coward for a moment. “I suppose she believed you’d be near enough to take shelter if anything actually happened before the two of you were ready to talk at more length.”

“Oh.” I thought about this for a long, few seconds. Then I said, not yet certain if I was resigned, or delighted, or what, “Well. At least now I’ve been warned. Cryptically. About whatever this is or isn’t I'm living with.”

Francher, who had somehow managed to follow everything at once during the second round, broke off a silence to join back in. Sounding absolutely exasperated if also quite serious, he spoke out loud to Mr. Howards. “This time I did notice, thank you. But I was already going to speak without that. The very best tunes are just as good a capella.”

Making quite the point of turning to me, he asked, “Would you like to go out to the movies with me tomorrow? When I was taking your tour, I saw _Sunrise at Campobello_ was playing downtown.”

First things first. “Thank you. I would be absolutely delighted to see it with you.” However, I was also someone with a job. I informed Mr. Howards, making it sweet as a jelly donut, “Sir, it’s obvious you and I should have that little chat ourselves.” Then I gave him The Look.

He smiled at me as if he was about to unleash giant, radioactive ants on Hollywood.

  


**V. “Her husband is known in the gates, when he sitteth among the elders of the land.”**

“Hey, there, Cats and Kittens, Dudes and Dudettes, Hips and Hippiers, and all the ships at sea. Don’t forget our dance party out at the Canyon Amphitheater at eight o’clock this Saturday evening in honor of KUOL-FM’s very own Twyla and Francher from Western Islands, who will be rockin’ it old-school by tying the knot up at the Chapel in the Oaks before they ease on down to join our spree.

“We’ll be providing all sorts of moves, courtesy of Tommy and the Cougars, The Crescendos, The McGuire Brothers, Nancy Day, and some very special surprise guests flying out to the coast to see both our lovebirds and you. As if that wasn’t enough, we’ll also have a whole lot of fancy cake to hand out and some sweet discs as door-prizes. Yes, free cake and free music! So, bring along a fork, and be there or be square: there’s going to be some music in the air!”


End file.
